Changing Seasons

Although it's still summertime, there's a shift in the air!  The August birthdays have been celebrated, Liam started school today, there's rain falling after a long drought, and there's a chill in the evening and early morning air.  I get excited thinking about all of the fun activities that happen in the fall and early winter--I remember last year being busy with fall festivals, Canadian Thanksgiving, Halloween activities, American Thanksgiving and our very special Friendsgiving with our good friends and then a good month of magical Christmas excitement!
Liam started school today--preschool in Ms. Shelby's class on Tues/Thurs at Interactive Academy.  He, and his 7 classmates, have art/music, phys ed, Spanish, lots and lots of playing and a healthy prepared lunch each day.  Apparently we lucked out with the teacher--she's supposed to be the best in the school.  We're all pretty excited for Liam's school year.  He will go to Kindergarten in Sept 2013 at Pleasant View.  We applied for him to go early, since he misses the cutoff by 2 weeks, and he was accepted (with flying colours, of course!!) but hearing that there were kids turning 7 that will be in Kindergarten alongside him made us question our decision.  He will always have the intellect, but going to Kindergarten next year will give him a whole year of maturity, size and strength.  So, another year at the awesome IA it is.  Win-win!
We celebrated Liam's 5th birthday yesterday.  We had a party here with some friends (Andy, Evan and Gus and their siblings, and Luke) and had pizza and ice cream cone cupcakes.  After everyone left, we all napped then got up and went to Oobatz for a birthday feast!  After dinner, we went for a swim in our neighbourhood pool.  It was a fun day.  A great day to turn five.
Jude is 2 weeks into being three and has embraced his big boy status wholeheartedly!  We started potty training a few days ago, and after the first couple of days of an accident or two, he has done fabulously!! I would love to say he's "trained" but we need a few more weeks of practicing being out and about.  Jude is just the sweetest three year old going!  He is so funny and really quite conscious of how he behaves and treats others.  He handles different situations so maturely (example--when his balloon car popped a balloon, he held in his tears and proceeded to tell me, "Mommy, no...it's not okay."  It almost broke my heart!) and uses his words so well.  His grasp of language is amazing.  He speaks fluently and with a great vocabulary.  He loves to dance and read stories and hear my crazy made-up songs.  He is truly a sunshine boy!
Noah is my little hip-baby.  He loves his Momma and can't stand to be too far away at any moment--to the point of screams and all out crying, especially when I'm gone and he needs me.  I spend a lot of my day toting him around or sitting near where he is playing to keep the peace.  He is a sweet, cuddly little monkey and he makes me laugh with how EXCITED he gets about things!  He just vibrates with energy and squeals with his mouth in the biggest grin!  He's climbing on everything and loves climbing up on tables and dancing.  I joke that I'm raising a Chippendale!  :)  Poor Noah is working on his teeth--a molar popped in without us even seeing it until the other day.  I only noticed because it looked like he was chewing on a black marble.  I looked in his mouth and the upper left gumline where his molar will be coming in was a black ball of pain!  He has a blood blister where the tooth is pushing through.  It looked horrible and it explains why he has been very fussy for the last few weeks.  I called the on-call doctor, who made sure he didn't have a fever, and let me know that it's normal and to get his pediatrician to see it.  Dr. Jones took a look and said hopefully it will break through soon.  Poor little monkey.  Tylenol hasn't been working, but luckily Advil has been more effective.  Ugh--I'll be happy when those teeth finally come in.  Anyway, with all of my checking on this massive blood blister I noticed on his right side he already broke a molar through!  That also explains his fussiness from the past few weeks.  It's funny because he only has his four front teeth and for the past 2 months the top two teeth beside his front ones have been trying to poke through, but haven't yet. I was sure they would be in next.  Sneaky little guy!  ;)
Noah's not much of a talker, but he can understand anything you say.  He can say "yeah" to whatever you ask him or he whines if it's a "no".  He says Dada and once in a while can say Mama.  Since I'm with him all of the time, he doesn't really get a chance to practise.  ;)
Noah is a bolter.  He runs full-out for the road whenever he gets the chance.  I have to be sure to not focus on anything else but him when we are outside playing. It's a challenge--Liam was the exact same way, but I only had Liam to worry about, so it wasn't that bad.  Jude was, and still is, very aware of rules and never ran away.  He stays close and plays on his own.  But Noah...oh that child!  He will play in the sand or the water and I will turn to help Jude get his helmet on and he will break and run!  What a monkey!
Scott starts his crazy schedule next week, although for the past couple of weeks he has been putting in more hours to get ready to teach full time and work at Andretti part time.  That means lots of time spent with just me and the three boys.  It was nice having him around a bit during the summer, although he did spend a lot of time catching up on his exhaustion.  Well, back to me and my musketeers again for the next 8 months.  We'll be sure to keep ourselves busy with all of the fall fun.